Disorder In The Crucible

In The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, occurring in 1692 in the little town of Salem, Massachusetts where outbreaks of the witchcraft trials had taken over many townspeople’s everyday lives (Miller, 1124). When accused of witchcraft, they were brought to trial at the court where there was a group a girls, including Abigail Williams, Betty Parris, and Ruth Putnam. These were the people who had accused many of witchcraft sending them to be hanged or to jail unless they confess. In the courtroom, when the convicted were being tried, the girls would sit there and mimic the movements that the person being tried were doing in hopes it would make this person seem as though they are putting spells on the girls. After looking into why the

These girls have all been through one or multiple stressful events or traumas in their lifetime, such as when they were all caught dancing in the woods when at this time in history was one of the worst things for you to ever do. This causing Betty and Ruth to both undergo a state of unresponsiveness, for example, the night before when Betty is lying unresponsive in bed, Abigail tells Betty’s father, Reverend Parris “when you leaped out of the bush so suddenly Betty was frightened and then she fainted”, which relates to the study shown that after a trauma signs and symptoms of conversion disorder are likely to occur. Additionally, Betty and Abigail had both had to experience the stress of losing a parent or both their parents. This had been shown to affect Betty when she woke from being unresponsive, she screamed, “I want my mama!” and Abigail replies with “your mama's dead and buried” these events had affected both of the girls dramatically, thus putting a lot of stress on them that had been building up from time and eventually became conversion disorder (Miller, 1136). During this time there was no way for the girls to relieve stress for “stress response systems are highly sensitive to social signals social support is critical for stress relief and social rejection or conflict” (Szalavitz), but they were unable to have any fun for the people of this time believed “no man had much time for fooling around” (Miller, 1127). Making it highly possible for the stress to build up over time and dancing in the woods was how they relieve stress, but when caught doing this the stress went overboard and caused them to get conversion